Now their recent partnership — establishing the new cross-campus Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) — offers the uniquely-CMU advantages borne of uniting cutting-edge technological expertise with world-class business education.

"We are thrilled that this partnership of our preeminent technological and business capabilities, as embodied by the new CIE, will further enable the remarkable synergies we see when our faculty and students reach across campus to collaborate — and continue to propel our university, and region, into the entrepreneurial forefront," said Mark S. Kamlet, CMU provost and executive vice president and head of the CIE's governing board.

The new center, made possible by a grant from the McCune Foundation's Big Ideas program, is jointly led by Lenore Blum, Project Olympus founding director and distinguished career professor of computer science and David Mawhinney, executive director of the Don Jones Center for Entrepreneurship and assistant teaching professor of entrepreneurship.

"Olympus has from the start worked closely with the Don Jones Center," explained Blum. "As collaborators and key entities of the Carnegie Mellon innovation eco-system, a partnership between Olympus and the DJC — between technology and business, if you will — made perfect sense."

And the center plans an even broader focus.

"As an elite research university, Carnegie Mellon is unique in enjoying world class status in a number of disciplines — engineering, computer science, design, business and more," said Mawhinney. "We're looking for representation from each of the schools because this is truly a cross-campus effort. We're bringing together all those elements to create innovation and to bring that innovation to society through entrepreneurship." Read More»